According to the Buddha, we are our own saviors. We are responsible for our own salvation. He urged us to become enlightened on our own, although it is important for us to reach out to good teachers first. Our aim should be to eradicate greed, hatred, and delusion, while cultivating virtues such as compassion and loving-kindness. These provide the foundational habits for moving away from delusion and attaining enlightenment. - Dipen Barua
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When meditators look closely at their minds, we are often aghast to discover how frequently thoughts reflect an obviously distorted perception of reality. - Shaila Catherine
We don’t like surprises. We like to have everything under control, to force our lives to be predictable. But there’s no way to make things perfectly predictable, no real security. Security is a grand illusion. - Anam Thubten
To lose heart just because of one or two failures is the height of foolishness. Life is a long, long journey. - Daisaku Ikeda
We become what we are through processes, consciously or unconsciously. Mostly we develop unconscious patterns through cultural and social conditioning. Yoga is precisely the path to overcome this conditioning, mentally and physically: it teaches you to steer your process of becoming toward the most optimal purpose.
- Ellen Johannesen Buddhism traditionally opposes abortion because a fetus is considered a sentient life and therefore, abortion is a form of killing which violates the first precept of Buddhism: to abstain from the taking of life.
However, many Buddhist leaders also view the issue as complex and one which needs to be addressed and infused with compassion. In a booklet titled The Buddhist Perspective on Women’s Rights, Hsing Yun, a modern Chinese Buddhist master, says there are at least two life issues where abortion may be acceptable. The first one deals with a woman who is pregnant with a fetus which is severely handicapped. “Can a third party tell her that she must not have any abortion?” he asks and adds: “After she bears the child, she will spend decades raising it, and will any of those people be around to help or even care about her then?” A second issue is a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant. “If we believe that compassion means that we must oppose all kinds of killing, including abortion, then how are we going to handle the mother’s potential life-long mixed feelings of love and animosity toward her child?” is the question he raises. Master Yun believes that the abortion issue cannot be simply or easily decided “because there are just too many complex factors present in nearly every case.” For that reason he teaches that “it is best to allow the person who is most affected by the abortion to have the right to decide what she wants to do, which means the pregnant woman should have the right to make the decision for herself. . .The person who has the most right to decide the question is the mother of the fetus. It should be up to her to make the decision and everyone else should respect it because, more than anyone else, she must bear all the consequences.” We live in disordered times, complicated, distracted, and demanding, yet to sustain a spiritual practice demands our steady attention. - Jack Kornfield
Too many people use aging as an excuse to do nothing, be nothing and become irrelevant. No matter what year you are in, never, never do that. Aging skillfully means thinking and acting in these ways. At any age, write your book. At any age, lift weights, bike, run a race. At any age, start a business. At any age, find new love. At any age, make new friends. At any age, move to a new country. At any age, buy a new vehicle. At any age, adopt a pet. At any age, learn a new language. Do everything and anything you can to avoid aging badly, unskillfully. - VMP
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. - M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled
You are never too old, too lost, too hurt, too addicted, too adrift, too damaged, too broken, too hopeless, to begin again. - Victor M. Parachin
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Victor M. Parachin ...is aVedic educator, yoga instructor, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of a dozen books. Buy his books at amazon or your local bookstore. Archives
March 2023
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